“WHAT is all this talk I ’ear about the Chinese?” said Mrs. Wilkins to me
the other morning. We generally indulge in a little chat while Mrs.
Wilkins is laying the breakfast-table. Letters and newspapers do not
arrive in my part of the Temple much before nine. From half-past eight
to nine I am rather glad of Mrs. Wilkins. “They ’ave been up to some of
their tricks again, ’aven’t they?”
“The foreigner, Mrs. Wilkins,” I replied, “whether he be Chinee or any
other he, is always up to tricks. Was not England specially prepared by
an all-wise Providence to frustrate these knavish tricks? Which of such
particular tricks may you be referring to at the moment, Mrs. Wilkins?”
“Well, ’e’s comin’ over ’ere—isn’t he, sir? to take the work out of our
mouths, as it were.”
“Well, not exactly over here, to England, Mrs. Wilkins,” I explained.
“He has been introduced into Africa to work in the mines there.”
“It’s a funny thing,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “but to ’ear the way some of
them talk in our block, you might run away with the notion—that is, if
you didn’t know ’em—that work was their only joy. I said to one of ’em,
the other evening—a man as calls ’isself a brass finisher, though, Lord
knows, the only brass ’e ever finishes is what ’is poor wife earns and
isn’t quick enough to ’ide away from ’im—well, whatever ’appens, I says,
it will be clever of ’em if they take away much work from you. It made
them all laugh, that did,” added Mrs. Wilkins, with a touch of pardonable
pride.
“Ah,” continued the good lady, “it’s surprising ’ow contented they can be
with a little, some of ’em. Give ’em a ’ard-working woman to look after
them, and a day out once a week with a procession of the unemployed, they
don’t ask for nothing more. There’s that beauty my poor sister Jane was
fool enough to marry. Serves ’er right, as I used to tell ’er at first,
till there didn’t seem any more need to rub it into ’er. She’d ’ad one
good ’usband. It wouldn’t ’ave been fair for ’er to ’ave ’ad another,
even if there’d been a chance of it, seeing the few of ’em there is to go
round among so many. But it’s always the same with us widows: if we
’appen to ’ave been lucky the first time, we put it down to our own
judgment—think we can’t ever make a mistake; and if we draw a wrong ’un,
as the saying is, we argue as if it was the duty of Providence to make it
up to us the second time. Why, I’d a been making a fool of myself three
years ago if ’e ’adn’t been good-natured enough to call one afternoon
when I was out, and ’ook it off with two pounds eight in the best teapot
that I ’ad been soft enough to talk to ’im about: and never let me set
eyes on ’im again. God bless ’im! ’E’s one of the born-tireds, ’e is,
as poor Jane might ’ave seen for ’erself, if she ’ad only looked at ’im,
instead of listening to ’im.
“But that’s courtship all the world over—old and young alike, so far as
I’ve been able to see it,” was the opinion of Mrs. Wilkins. “The man’s
all eyes and the woman all ears. They don’t seem to ’ave any other
senses left ’em. I ran against ’im the other night, on my way ’ome, at
the corner of Gray’s Inn Road. There was the usual crowd watching a pack
of them Italians laying down the asphalt in ’Olborn, and ’e was among
’em. ’E ’ad secured the only lamp-post, and was leaning agen it.
“’Ullo,’ I says, ‘glad to see you ’aven’t lost your job. Nothin’ like
stickin’ to it, when you’ve dropped into somethin’ that really suits
you.’
“‘What do you mean, Martha?’ ’e says. ’E’s not one of what I call your
smart sort. It takes a bit of sarcasm to get through ’is ’ead.
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘you’re still on the old track, I see, looking for work.
Take care you don’t ’ave an accident one of these days and run up agen it
before you’ve got time to get out of its way.’
“‘It’s these miserable foreigners,’ ’e says. ‘Look at ’em,’ ’e says.
“‘There’s enough of you doing that,’ I says. ‘I’ve got my room to put
straight and three hours needlework to do before I can get to bed. But
don’t let me ’inder you. You might forget what work was like, if you
didn’t take an opportunity of watching it now and then.’
“‘They come over ’ere,’ ’e says, ‘and take the work away from us chaps.’
“‘Ah,’ I says, ‘poor things, perhaps they ain’t married.’
“‘Lazy devils! ’e says. ‘Look at ’em, smoking cigarettes. I could do
that sort of work. There’s nothing in it. It don’t take ’eathen
foreigners to dab a bit of tar about a road.’
“‘Yes,’ I says, ‘you always could do anybody else’s work but your own.’
“‘I can’t find it, Martha,’ ’e says.
“‘No,’ I says, ‘and you never will in the sort of places you go looking
for it. They don’t ’ang it out on lamp-posts, and they don’t leave it
about at the street corners. Go ’ome,’ I says, ‘and turn the mangle for
your poor wife. That’s big enough for you to find, even in the dark.’
“Looking for work!” snorted Mrs. Wilkins with contempt; “we women never
’ave much difficulty in finding it, I’ve noticed. There are times when I
feel I could do with losing it for a day.”
“But what did he reply, Mrs. Wilkins,” I asked; “your brass-finishing
friend, who was holding forth on the subject of Chinese cheap labour.”
Mrs. Wilkins as a conversationalist is not easily kept to the point. I
was curious to know what the working classes were thinking on the
subject.
“Oh, that,” replied Mrs. Wilkins, “’e did not say nothing. ’E ain’t the
sort that’s got much to say in an argument. ’E belongs to the crowd that
’angs about at the back, and does the shouting. But there was another of
’em, a young fellow as I feels sorry for, with a wife and three small
children, who ’asn’t ’ad much luck for the last six months; and that
through no fault of ’is own, I should say, from the look of ’im. ‘I was
a fool,’ says ’e, ‘when I chucked a good situation and went out to the
war. They told me I was going to fight for equal rights for all white
men. I thought they meant that all of us were going to ’ave a better
chance, and it seemed worth making a bit of sacrifice for, that did. I
should be glad if they would give me a job in their mines that would
enable me to feed my wife and children. That’s all I ask them for!’”
“It is a difficult problem, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said. “According to the
mine owners—”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “They don’t seem to be exactly what you’d call
popular, them mine owners, do they? Daresay they’re not as bad as
they’re painted.”
“Some people, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “paint them very black. There are
those who hold that the South African mine-owner is not a man at all, but
a kind of pantomime demon. You take Goliath, the whale that swallowed
Jonah, a selection from the least respectable citizens of Sodom and
Gomorrah at their worst, Bluebeard, Bloody Queen Mary, Guy Fawkes, and
the sea-serpent—or, rather, you take the most objectionable attributes of
all these various personages, and mix them up together. The result is
the South African mine-owner, a monster who would willingly promote a
company for the putting on the market of a new meat extract, prepared
exclusively from new-born infants, provided the scheme promised a fair
and reasonable opportunity of fleecing the widow and orphan.”
“I’ve ’eard they’re a bad lot,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “But we’re most of us
that, if we listen to what other people say about us.”
“Quite so, Mrs. Wilkins,” I agreed. “One never arrives at the truth by
listening to one side only. On the other hand, for example, there are
those who stoutly maintain that the South African mine-owner is a kind of
spiritual creature, all heart and sentiment, who, against his own will,
has been, so to speak, dumped down upon this earth as the result of
over-production up above of the higher class of archangel. The stock of
archangels of superior finish exceeds the heavenly demand; the surplus
has been dropped down into South Africa and has taken to mine owning. It
is not that these celestial visitors of German sounding nomenclature care
themselves about the gold. Their only desire is, during this earthly
pilgrimage of theirs, to benefit the human race. Nothing can be obtained
in this world without money—”
“That’s true,” said Mrs. Wilkins, with a sigh.
“For gold, everything can be obtained. The aim of the mine-owning
archangel is to provide the world with gold. Why should the world
trouble to grow things and make things? ‘Let us,’ say these archangels,
temporarily dwelling in South Africa, ‘dig up and distribute to the world
plenty of gold, then the world can buy whatever it wants, and be happy.’
“There may be a flaw in the argument, Mrs. Wilkins,” I allowed. “I am
not presenting it to you as the last word upon the subject. I am merely
quoting the view of the South African mine-owner, feeling himself a much
misunderstood benefactor of mankind.”
“I expect,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “they are just the ordinary sort of
Christian, like the rest of us, anxious to do the best they can for
themselves, and not too particular as to doing other people in the
process.”
“I am inclined to think, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “that you are not very
far from the truth. A friend of mine, a year ago, was very bitter on
this subject of Chinese cheap labour. A little later there died a
distant relative of his who left him twenty thousand South African mining
shares. He thinks now that to object to the Chinese is narrow-minded,
illiberal, and against all religious teaching. He has bought an abridged
edition of Confucius, and tells me that there is much that is ennobling
in Chinese morality. Indeed, I gather from him that the introduction of
the Chinese into South Africa will be the saving of that country. The
noble Chinese will afford an object lesson to the poor white man,
displaying to him the virtues of sobriety, thrift, and humility. I also
gather that it will be of inestimable benefit to the noble Chinee
himself. The Christian missionary will get hold of him in bulk, so to
speak, and imbue him with the higher theology. It appears to be one of
those rare cases where everybody is benefited at the expense of nobody.
It is always a pity to let these rare opportunities slip by.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “I’ve nothin’ to say agen the Chinaman, as a
Chinaman. As to ’is being a ’eathen, well, throwin’ stones at a church,
as the sayin’ is, don’t make a Christian of you. There’s Christians I’ve
met as couldn’t do themselves much ’arm by changing their religion; and
as to cleanliness, well, I’ve never met but one, and ’e was a
washerwoman, and I’d rather ’ave sat next to ’im in a third-class
carriage on a Bank ’Oliday than next to some of ’em.
“Seems to me,” continued Mrs. Wilkins, “we’ve got into the ’abit of
talkin’ a bit too much about other people’s dirt. The London atmosphere
ain’t nat’rally a dry-cleanin’ process in itself, but there’s a goodish
few as seem to think it is. One comes across Freeborn Britons ’ere and
there as I’d be sorry to scrub clean for a shillin’ and find my own
soap.”
“It is a universal failing, Mrs. Wilkins,” I explained. “If you talk to
a travelled Frenchman, he contrasts to his own satisfaction the Paris
_ouvrier_ in his blue blouse with the appearance of the London labourer.”
“I daresay they’re all right according to their lights,” said Mrs.
Wilkins, “but it does seem a bit wrong that if our own chaps are willin’
and anxious to work, after all they’ve done, too, in the way of getting
the mines for us, they shouldn’t be allowed the job.”
“Again, Mrs. Wilkins, it is difficult to arrive at a just conclusion,” I
said. “The mine-owner, according to his enemies, hates the British
workman with the natural instinct that evil creatures feel towards the
noble and virtuous. He will go to trouble and expense merely to spite
the British workman, to keep him out of South Africa. According to his
friends, the mine-owner sets his face against the idea of white labour
for two reasons. First and foremost, it is not nice work; the mine-owner
hates the thought of his beloved white brother toiling in the mines. It
is not right that the noble white man should demean himself by such work.
Secondly, white labour is too expensive. If for digging gold men had to
be paid anything like the same prices they are paid for digging coal, the
mines could not be worked. The world would lose the gold that the
mine-owner is anxious to bestow upon it.
“The mine-owner, following his own inclinations, would take a little
farm, grow potatoes, and live a beautiful life—perhaps write a little
poetry. A slave to sense of duty, he is chained to the philanthropic
work of gold-mining. If we hamper him and worry him the danger is that
he will get angry with us—possibly he will order his fiery chariot and
return to where he came from.”
“Well, ’e can’t take the gold with him, wherever ’e goes to?” argued Mrs.
Wilkins.
“You talk, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “as if the gold were of more value to
the world than is the mine-owner.”
“Well, isn’t it?” demanded Mrs. Wilkins.
“It’s a new idea, Mrs. Wilkins,” I answered; “it wants thinking out.”